Trump has big week on world stage
WASHINGTON — German Chancellor Angela Merkel came to the White House for a working lunch with President Donald Trump. After the pomp and spectacle showered on French President Emmanuel Macron earlier in the week, Friday’s meeting seemed more like homework than a celebration of shared values and bonhomie.
Merkel’s visit could not have been timed better for Trump, who was buoyed by an agreement between North Korea and South Korea to pursue long-term denuclearization and work toward a formal end to the Korean War. Coupled with Macron’s visit and the Senate confirmation of Trump’s new secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, it was a good week on the diplomatic front for the president.
Trump credited his campaign of “maximum pressure” with economic sanctions for bringing Pyongyang to the negotiating table. Merkel seemed to agree when she noted Trump “really saw to it” that sanctions on North Korea were strong.
Vice President Mike Pence also credited Trump for bringing the Korean peninsula to this moment.
“The fact that North Korea has come to the table without the United States making any concessions speaks to the strength of President Trump’s leadership and is a clear sign that the intense pressure of sanctions is working,” Pence said in a statement.
The agreement was brokered in the Korean Demilitarized Zone in talks that featured North Korean leader Kim Jong Un stepping into South Korea and South Korean President Moon Jae-in stepping into North Korea. It was the first time a North Korean leader had set foot on South Korean soil since 1953.
Merkel’s second visit
Trump greeted Merkel in the West Wing lobby Friday with a kiss on the cheek. As the two sat in the Oval Office, they made a point of shaking hands before reporters. Trump claimed the two have had “a really great relationship” from the beginning.
During a press conference in the East Room, the two leaders agreed to disagree on the Iran nuclear deal, proposed U.S. tariffs on European steel and aluminum, and Germany’s level of defense spending — 1.3 percent of GDP next year, or far short of the 2 percent goal for NATO nations.
Trump has hinted he may withdraw the United States from the nuclear pact with Iran by May 12, even though both Merkel and Macron have worked to keep the U.S. as a party to the international deal.
This was Merkel’s second visit to the Trump White House and both she and the president seemed more relaxed together than in 2017. At one point Merkel visibly cringed after Trump said, “Washington can be a very mean place. You don’t know about that, Chancellor.”
“It was a very different dynamic from the Macron visit earlier this week,” Nile Gardiner, a European scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told the Review-Journal. “But certainly I think somewhat warmer than the last meeting between Merkel and Trump. The president I think is a bit more at ease at these things.”
Gardiner also saw the juxtaposition of the French and German visits as a sign of Germany’s waning as a world power.
“Germany remains the big economic powerhouse in Europe, but on the world stage,” he said, “it’s a declining force.”
Historic agreement
At the press conference with Merkel, Trump congratulated the leaders of North and South Korea for their historic summit. He said a “maximum pressure” campaign will continue “until denuclearization occurs.”
“I think (Trump) can have partial credit that the tough line that he takes is kind of good cop/bad cop, the role that’s being played by South Korea and the United States,” observed Reno’s Ty Cobb, a former policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan now with the National Security Forum.
Trump is supposed to meet face to face with Kim in May or June at a location yet to be decided. At a recent Stimson Center event, Jenny Town, of the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins, predicted negotiators “are not going to set a date until they are comfortable” that a deal can be reached.
While Trump seemed triumphant in his belief that he had moved the Koreas toward a nuclear-free peace, he also told reporters his administration is “not going to be played” by Pyongyang as previous administrations were.
Trump would not disclose if he has spoken directly with Kim.
Recently, the administration surprised the world with news that Pompeo had secretly met with Kim in Pyongyang. The White House released photos of the meeting on Thursday, as the Senate voted 57-42 to confirm the former congressman and CIA chief to be America’s top diplomat.
In Brussels on Friday, Pompeo told reporters that he got the impression that Kim was “serious” about negotiating on denuclearization because of the Trump-led economic pressure campaign.
But Pompeo added a word of caution: “I am always careful. There is a lot of history here. Promises have been made, hopes have been raised and then dashed.”
Contact Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com or 202-662-7391. Follow @DebraJSaunders on Twitter. The Associated Press contributed to this report.